Gen 2 Should Snorlax count as Uber in GSC?

Curselax is atrocious offense (ever try it vs a stall?), but he's pretty good defense. Of course, when comparing it to your team, it's probably beats you from turn 1. But then again, your entire team can be labeled as "bad offense", or "bad defense", whichever you prefer (why else did you lose to a pretty basic stall in one of the least amusing games ever? You outplayed Sk, no doubt, but that's not to say you played great either. You played pretty questionable as well. However, you didn't lose to luck, you lost because of an inferior team and a lack of strategy/understanding for the game. I have the log if you want me to break it down and teach you a thing or two).

You're free to run hypnosis on gengar to get away from ttar, and many do, I don't know why you're disparagingly dismissing it. Gengar makes a great ptrapper, a better one than missy, and you've got this right the first time: because of the element of surprise. And just an FYI, because it's relying on the surprise factor, you can get away with not using Protect most of the time. Boltbeam to disguise it as standard Gengar works, dbond works as well, it's completely up to you.

If you feel like you're keeping Snorlax in against a DPing ttar, that's your play. Of course, if and when it does hits, what do you do? Cry about luck. Whatever, that's your play. That's your mistake. You're an inferior player for a reason. Especially when a million things could switch into a predicted DP pretty easily, and a DP hit on Snorlax compromises Snorlax's usefulness quite a bit (e.g. no longer walling Thunder Zapdos).

Yeah, call me ignorant and then go on to say Pursuit is useful against Exeggutor...

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It is. Crunch/FB + Pursuit is for Egg, as much as it is for Gengar. No one but you is disagreeing. Wonder why. Egg is a top 5 pokemon, why wouldn't you counter it? Oh wait, you use zam. Get with the times.

Sure, Seismic Toss is better if you catch Skarm nearly-dead (or on the switch at or below 180 HP).

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This is two cursed DEs from Snorlax, two unboosted RSes from Wak, this is a little over 1 stoss from hera, what's so rare about a Skarm being <180 again? How many DPs would it take to bring Skarm to <180? Factoring in accuracy, 4, factoring in prediction, probably all 8. How many S-tosses? 2.

Otherwise, DP is better because of the confusion.

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Why? Again, you're switching out vs Skarm, most likely to Zapdos/Raikou or something, regardless of DP hit or miss, unless you're risking the 25/75, and you can't possibly be that dense. Furthermore, DP statistically can never kill Skarm (nor Zapdos/Dnite, but that's another story).

And there's a pretty bad inconsistency in arguments here. Seems you're disagreeing with me for the sake of disagreeing with me (which is dumb, because you can't back half the bullshit you're spewing).

Skarm doesn't need to rest off damage, you're crazy. It can take another 3 DPs, which would take another 6 DP PPs combined with proper prediction. In that time, Stoss would've caused Skarm to rest twice already. First you call ttar DPing a Snorlax a bad move even though it would completely cripple it, but DPing Skarm with Hera isn't? And risk what essentially is a 25/75 against you?

I've made over a thousand teams easily (invented a few movesets, puts vaporeon on the map, and pioneered/popularized the primary offensive strategy you see today in bait-explosion), you've tried maybe 6-7 pokemon. You have one team, a pretty bad one for christ's sake. The only thing you did was opened my eyes to was how good a 3 attack cursechamp could be. I'll give you that. But you're not in a position to teach anybody anything. God knows why you went 6-2, ask your opponents, cause I sure as hell don't know. We can play if you like, I'll just use curselax. Better watch out, some amazing offense coming your way. Rules are: can't use what you're learning from this post (that your team is essentially an explosion team with down syndrome). Stick to your team and your argument, I'll tell you mine to make things even. Feel helpless; live, learn, laugh.

EDIT: I remember you mentioning a log with vil, and blaming the loss on luck. Care to post that? If it's anything like the useless luck Sk handed you, then I ask very kindly, get off your high horse and return to reality. You're undeservingly stubborn, and a mediocre player with a subpar team at best (and have been nothing more than mediocre your entire "career") until you start to accept some criticism.

I suppose a stall "shouldn't" have problems taking out offensive teams, but I guess what I'm thinking of are what you call "fail" teams. I think every "good" team should be capable of taking down as many different kinds of teams as possible, which is why I guess I've never been big on stall teams. maybe it's an avenue worth exploring.
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"Point being, Raikou becomes the premier special wall in GSC (blissey still sucking), boosting its popularity. Zapdos loses one of its biggest threats (but it still won't get past Raikou, granted, statistically, Raikou shouldn't be able to KO Zapdos all that often either). Just saying, both of them will be a hell of a lot better than they already are, which is already pretty fucking good."

this is to be expected. if you take out undoubtedly the most popular pokemon, everything else's popularity will increase at least a little, and everything will get a little bit better relatively. Raikou might be the premier special wall, and it may be one of the most popular pokemon if Snorlax was to be banned, but Raikou can't stand up to, say, Houndoom like Snorlax can. or Jynx. or Alakazam. or Espeon. even your Vaporeon (debatably, but the fact that it's debatable I think is good enough). things like Houndoom and Espeon aren't used because of Snorlax's high HP, Special Defense, Attack, and its typing--the mere threat of it, not Raikou or even Tyranitar, keeps them from being used. Raikou can wall Zapdos, but it can't take Thunder Wave like Snorlax.

take Snorlax out the picture and all of a sudden, to me, there seems to be (HYPOTHETICALLY, mind you) a chance that more pokemon, and maybe more movesets on the pokemon that are already frequently used can be incorporated into the metagame...more variety, which is I think what this whole discussion is about. how many, I couldn't tell; this is all theorymon. it could be many, it could be none. the problem with Snorlax is that it does so many things simultaneously--it's defensive, it's offensive, it sweeps teams physically and absorbs special hits, which is so awesome because most strong special attackers have terrible Defense. the only thing that has a Snorlax-like stat layout is Muk, but it is checked by its typing; Snorlax doesn't have that kind of balance. and even though Snorlax's Defense is sort of low, it's monstrous HP means it can actually switch in and take a physical hit or two. for example, even if Tentacruel has a Swords Dance under its belt, Snorlax will still beat it one-on-one even without Curse. if something has already been put to sleep, it can switch into Nidoking. Raikou, Blissey, etc. just don't have that kind of ability.

I'm not advocating one way or the other, but I do understand the argument for banning Snorlax, and honestly I think it's possible, quite possible actually, that there could be more good than harm from banning it. ever since my pokemon career began, I always kind of despised Snorlax because I thought it overcentralized the game. but I don't want my bias against it to prevent me from being objective.

I asked for an example of an effective team that not only doesn't, but shouldn't run Snorlax. Perhaps I should have specified "and doesn't run Ubers", but hey, I got what I asked for. I would be interested to see an example that does meet all three conditions, though.

I may be able to respond to some of the other points in the last few posts later.

I would love to see the game with no snorlax. If snorlax were removed, Blissey would get a bump up for being such a great special sponge. Raikou is a great Zapdos wall, but not necessarily an all-around special wall like havoc said. This would open up more options for offensive teams since blissey allows them to setup where snorlax doesn't.

The main reason I agree with Borat that offensive teams lose to stall teams is because offensive teams can't truly shut down snorlax (unless your offense is already off and running), which stalls often use as their main offense, so with a plethora of walls, spikes, and snorlax, stalls played properly should eventually take control and win. Removing snorlax would hurt stalls severely, seeing as its often the primary offense on a stall team, as opposed to as much as a 4th option offense on an offensive team. It would be interesting to say the least...

Gengar may as well run Hypnosis to get away from T-Tar more reliably than attempting to cripple it with Dynamicpunch. With regard to Blissey, Perish Trapping requires at least a second moveslot (Mean Look), if not a dedicated moveset, and Explosion has a rather obvious drawback.

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And can't you just Hypnosis against Blissey as well? Even then, you're wrong. Hypnosis isn't more reliable than Dynamicpunch. You lost 10% acc, but you can use it over the time against any opponent, contrary to Hypnosis, as once you've used it against something else, you lost your alternative against Tyranitar. Anyway, Dynamicpunch is there just to scare Tyranitar, not to beat it.

On the Stalls vs. Offense topics: I can say at least 70% of the GSC players now are either of my community or influencied by it. The problem is, we didn't knew how to play offensivelly (and I mean good offense here), and when we discover this, everyone initiate to play super offense teams with super speed. Stalls were a staple before it. When a new player enters in a battle against a stall team, he lost by 6-0 almost surelly. If he faces an Offensive team, he normally loses 3-0, 2-0 or even won. Back when Stalls were staple, newer players were discouraged to continuing playing coz they always lost. But now, they make crap teams, they won, they think they're good. I'm working with Borat on a new update on my community to equilibrate the metagame again. I'm the most influential player there, so I can make the changes for a more equilibrated metagame.

On the Snorlax ban: out of question. We can discuss this, but ban Snorlax is like ban GSC. I'm sure that if this ban occur, my entire community will stop to play the game (or we'll make our own rules to play).

On the Snorlax ban: out of question. We can discuss this, but ban Snorlax is like ban GSC. I'm sure that if this ban occur, my entire community will stop to play the game (or we'll make our own rules to play).

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I'm sure we all know that this "hypothetical" Snorlax ban will probably never happen since GSC is too far gone and "in the books" to really make such a monumental metagame shift. in addition, I'm of the opinion that people love Snorlax's usefulness too much to part with it. as we've discussed, it does so many things at once that the thought of losing such an easy and effective safety net is a definite turnoff.

the only way it would happen (and I'm pretty sure someone mentioned this in another thread) is if Shoddy 2 supported all the generations, hopefully spiking interest in GSC enough to the point that we'd have enough "GSC intelligent" players to run a Suspect Test process similar to the ones run for Garchomp and Salamence in DPP. all of this has an incredibly slim chance of happening, of course.

Idk, I think most people would be willing to admit that Snorlax is legitimately Uber in GSC, its just that it was never banned so its too late to change it now. I don't play DPPT but Snorlax in GSC is leagues above Egg in RBY. MAYBE Tauros or Chansey compare, but not really. Snorlax is on every half-serious GSC team. Not only is he on every team, but you will also find 1 or 2 pokes on every team that are specifically there to shut down the various forms of Snorlax you might face. It also now sleeps things, making it completely impossible to fully shut down. To top it off, it doubles as a monstrous special wall.

I don't play RSE or DP, but I'd be pretty surprised if there's any poke of any generation as dominant as GSC lax.

I'm sure a lot of offensive options will open up without Snorlax (who shut them down offensively and defensively). Stalls are not the enemy. This seems to be the common misconception about GSC. And I guess I haven't done too much to propagate any thoughts that would dismiss that idea. But the point here is that stall is not the bad guy. Stalls give GSC the reputation as being the most stable generation, the truest testament of skill and the least susceptible to luck (LEAST susceptible, not NOT susceptible). That's a good thing. But it's mostly the idiots that don't know what to do against stall, or how to play stall, that give it a bad rep. A stall played unskillfully is hardly a threat, but when you play it aggressively, that's when it's one of the best types of teams in the game. A stall that's always one step behind (you switch to snorlax, he goes to skarm, you go to raikou, he goes to snorlax etc etc) is annoying at best, and can probably squeeze out a few wins. However, it's only when stall is played one step ahead, then that's when it gets interesting. Factor in spikes, and roar predictions from steelix/suicune/raikou/skarm/rhydon/whatever, that's when stall really shines. And playing a stall like this involves quite a bit of skill, along with a lot of risk (you'll probably switching raikou into snorlax more times than you can count), and hardly a unhealthy thing for the metagame. Playing stalls like this press the tempo quicker than your opponents want it, and that's when it's most dangerous. In fact, if I had to choose to get rid of one archetype, it'd probably be explosion teams. Those things are easily one of the worst testaments of skill in the game. Anyone can pilot an explosion team to win against even the best players, bridging that skill gap, at least for me, is unhealthy.

I've been getting into sim-racing for the past couple of years, and what I've gathered, the hardest, most challenging car, is usually the quickest. Tuning it for the least possible downforce to make the car quicker, but stupidly difficult to handle, usually leads to the quickest lap times once you do learn to control the car. Playing it game with all assists off also leads to quicker lap times, but a more difficult to control car. This idea carries over to pretty much everything in life; the best paying jobs usually spring from the most difficult majors in college. Likewise, I feel like it should hold true in pokemon as well. The most challenging teams should also be the most rewarding (by challenging, I don't mean something stupid, like BP chain to sunkern or something, but at least in terms of skill). Explosion is one of the easiest teams to pilot, with that "oops I fucked up but oh well I still have a 500 base power attack" button. Stalls are pretty easy to play on a general level: just wall shit. But that's not enough against someone who knows what he's doing. You have to take the team to the next level. You can't just follow him and wall him forever, that's just not happening. And that's when skill kicks in.

Another nice thing about stalls is that it keeps shit by the book. It'll beat out those rogue offenses to the ground, easily. That self-regulating metagame is nice, keeps gsc strictly "srs bsns".

Anyway, long story short, Snorlax probably hurts stalls more than it will offenses, which isn't necessarily a good thing. A stable, healthy metagame should have a mix of all types of teams. Eliminating one of them doesn't make sense, not to me.

PS. Stall vs stall should come down on spikes war, not PP war. PP wars are gay, both to play and to watch, and it means two pretty bad stalls, that's all.

Havoc changed the tiers around a little bit in response to some of the recent topics around here.

As for his big post on 'Lax, it's entirely true, yet I don't take that to mean Snorlax needs to be or even should be banned. My traditionalist competitive attitude whispers, "It always has a couple decent counters and it's not nigh-guaranteed to take down half a team with it. It's not broken good, it should stay unbanned." If you're coming from somewhere else, like havoc's attitude that we should get rid of it because it causes the metagame more harm than good... Yeah, maybe. I can buy that. Snorlax isn't broken but it's probably strong enough that it ultimately constricts the metagame. It's not necessarily a matter of right or wrong, just a difference in vision of what competitive Pokémon should be.

Curselax is atrocious offense (ever try it vs a stall?), but he's pretty good defense.

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Petty insults aside, Curselax is still pretty good. I don't give a crap about labels, a good pokémon is a good pokémon. And yes, it is largely the defensive boost that makes Curse so valuable and troublesome to deal with. It takes away Explosion as an option for eliminating Snorlax and it makes Marowak/Machamp more wary of switching in. What's left, Skarmory? You could run Fire Blast on Curselax if you wanted but otherwise you're not getting around it too easily anyway, regardless of your other attacks. There's Growl Miltank (or even Growl Blissey if Snorlax is the one coming in, which is frequently the case) but it's a little more susceptible to getting paralyzed and eventually losing to a bad streak of FPs or an untimely crit.

To say it's not offensive is deceiving, though. It's not risky, like Drumlax, but it's still hitting things off a base 110 Attack with a good, neutral STAB. It can still potentially break anything, given time, and Curselax is good at getting time because it's so safe and consistent.

If you feel like you're keeping Snorlax in against a DPing ttar, that's your play. Of course, if and when it does hits, what do you do? Cry about luck. Whatever, that's your play. That's your mistake. You're an inferior player for a reason. Especially when a million things could switch into a predicted DP pretty easily, and a DP hit on Snorlax compromises Snorlax's usefulness quite a bit (e.g. no longer walling Thunder Zapdos).

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Is it a mistake? It's a 50/50 shot, so there's really no right or wrong, though it's actually better odds than that. (I'll explain.) If T-Tar misses, I wear down a pokémon that can't reliably get that health back. If they hit, I'll still hit them back 50% of the time and I'll switch out afterward, knowing Snorlax will get plenty of opportunities to recover later. Ultimately, Snorlax is at the clear advantage. "Mistakes" aren't made or broken off the result of a play, you just have to go with the odds... or rarely against them in desperate times. Sometimes you can do exactly the right thing and still come out the loser, likewise when you make a mistake. That's just Pokémon, shit's like poker or pretty much any other probability-based game out there.

That's assuming I already know Tyranitar HAS Dynamicpunch. If not, keeping Snorlax in only gets more appealing as there's no guarantee T-Tar can even threaten it. It could be banking on me not having Earthquake (mono-attacker or Fire Blast for Skarmory) or just coming in to Roar and buy some time for my opponent.

Whether or not you choose another option depends on your team and the circumstance you're in. How likely are they to Dynamicpunch, if they have it? What else do I have that matches up well against T-Tar? Maybe I keep Snorlax in because I don't think they'll use it or I simply have nothing better against T-Tar. (e.g. My Suicune got blown up and Marowak isn't full health.) Also keep in mind that, even if you switch out to something strong against T-Tar, Dynamicpunch will confuse your switch-in half the time and trying to fight through that still kinda sucks.

It is. Crunch/FB + Pursuit is for Egg, as much as it is for Gengar. No one but you is disagreeing. Wonder why. Egg is a top 5 pokemon, why wouldn't you counter it? Oh wait, you use zam. Get with the times.

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You mean the 'Zam that made Sk's Tyranitar look completely foolish? Yeah, I got told alright. Eggy lacks recovery, so it doesn't like to be worn down like that, but it's a bit tankier than Gengar/Zam and can throw status at it. Eggy can also pack Giga Drain to put up a better fight against T-Tar than Gengar can really muster. Some Gengar sets just roll over to T-Tar and even the ones that don't (ones carrying Dynamicpunch or Hypnosis) are less reliable at escaping, where Exeggutor always puts up a good fight. It's not "for" (read: doesn't hose) Eggy so much as it is simply your best option against it.

Why? Again, you're switching out vs Skarm, most likely to Zapdos/Raikou or something, regardless of DP hit or miss, unless you're risking the 25/75, and you can't possibly be that dense. Furthermore, DP statistically can never kill Skarm (nor Zapdos/Dnite, but that's another story).

Skarm doesn't need to rest off damage, you're crazy. It can take another 3 DPs, which would take another 6 DP PPs combined with proper prediction. In that time, Stoss would've caused Skarm to rest twice already. First you call ttar DPing a Snorlax a bad move even though it would completely cripple it, but DPing Skarm with Hera isn't? And risk what essentially is a 25/75 against you?

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Seismic Toss can "make" Skarm Rest all it wants (or risk the Skarm player taking the OHKO and trying to fenagle a recover opportunity later), a 4HKO that can't crit will never break it. Unless you just feel like wasting PP for no reason, you have to switch out and ultimately deal no lasting damage to Skarmory. At least with Dynamicpunch, you've got a 25% chance of preventing it from Resting off your damage, such that it's not at full health the next time you switch in a threat that requires Skarmory to appear. Chances are it's not going to help much either way but a non-zero chance, however unlikely, is always better than a "zero." Of course, Heracross can't learn Dynamicpunch at all, so whatever.

As for your constant attempts to troll me, I'll go ahead and entertain you. I enjoy putting mouthy egotists in their place and I've nothing better to do anyway. The only "grievous" error I made against Sk last week was that I failed to re-apply Spikes after he sacced Starmie to my Marowak to Spin them. I realized it after the fact when I was questioning why Snorlax wasn't wearing down as easily as I had expected, though I still would have won if everything else played to the odds. The fact I lost on a 6.25% CH from a 50% accurate attack that he hadn't even revealed yet is... Well, "that's just Pokémon." I had two pokémon asleep, the least I needed was a successful Heal Bell to wake up Marowak and Zapdos and I was robbed by a ~3% chance that I didn't even realize was on the table. Only a fool (or a troll) would claim my loss there was due to anything other than sheer, dumb luck.

Against VIL, that loss was based more on the fact I altered a few moves from the usual stuff I use. It turns out I would have won that game using my normal stuff but nonetheless, kudos to him for playing mistake-free in an end-game I dragged out for ages just waiting for him to make one so I could turn it around (or for a spot of good luck to do it for me).

Curselax is bad offense. I see you retracted a little bit of your statement there, now go the full nine yards with it. It's bad offense. Raikou can deal 180 base attacks off 328, but it still wouldn't be all that offensive would it?

You're some guy who kept at it through 10 years of history, that's it. Skill-wise, nothing special. You've been mediocre your entire career. And you still don't get the game the way the best of the best due. This is evident in your play. That's beside the point though. Your team is Alakazam, Zapdos, Blissey, Marowak, Gengar, and Cloyster. What makes sense: Gengar + Cloyster. Good spiker + spin wall, and they explode to boot (you know my stance on explosion). Marowak is an unstoppable force with the SD set, however slow it may be. But you choose to run BS, EQ, Rest talk, which is merely a support pokemon for paralyzing shit. The rest of your team is every bit as much of a joke as you are. It's a pathetic team overall. Alakazam sucks, Blissey sucks, Zapdos [set] sucks.

Sk romped your ass with a superior team and inferior play, however it's nice to look on in hindsight, hindsight is 20/20 afterall. And downplay them to "only misplays". They weren't mistakes, they were much more than that. It was a guy with a handicapped team, failing to realize his only shot at winning. But of course, this wouldn't even hae been possible if Sk hadn't already "misplayed" starmie badly. Spinning and letting it die was the worst possible play, especially when he's got you walled and could force your hand with curselax. Not to mention, Starmie can switch into 3/5 of your remaining team without any repurcussions. At that time, you already knew his 6, and he knew your 6, and there's no reason why spikes was not lain, when you prioritized a freeze chance over it? At least with spikes, it allowed you to play mind games with Zapdos and Marowak enough to incur enough spikes damage, but you sucked. You went for the freeze on cune, which was an irrelevent Pokemon in the bigger picture. This was not a misplay, but a lack of understanding. You. Do. Not. Understand. The. Game.

You didn't see it as a misplay at the time, because you had no idea what you were doing. You were playing everything turn by turn. You could predict as a player, so what? Prediction is only a small part of the bigger picture. One of the first things to learn about GSC and playing it properly is strategy. Strategy is... the bigger picture. It's your method of winning. Think of prediction as the journey and strategy as the destination. Prediction is 2, 3, even 4 turns ahead. Strategy is be 50, 80, 300 turns ahead. It's what you're working towards the entire game, to give the game a sense of direction. You don't mindlessly predict without an effort to gain ground. Also important is that some teams just don't have "strategy". There are no paths to victory. That's what I allude to in my old post about "fail" teams. I don't blame you for not knowing this though, most people still don't. It's nice to at least admit it though.

The fact I lost on a 6.25% CH from a 50% accurate attack that he hadn't even revealed yet is... Well, "that's just Pokémon." I had two pokémon asleep, the least I needed was a successful Heal Bell to wake up Marowak and Zapdos and I was robbed by a ~3% chance that I didn't even realize was on the table.

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Funny guy you. This was SK's game to lose from the very beginning. You had NO answer to Curselax. From the very beginning, you were playing a ticking bomb with Gengar as being a nuisance to lax until tyranitar could pursuit it to death (I assume you ran DP, since ttar never really switched into it). Your best shot was laying down spikes, keeping down spikes, then wearing him down. This would be pretty tough on a team without a single phazer. However, you didn't play it like this. It showed. You actually tried to break his defense with some pretty abysmal offense. Explosion on Raikou was a hit or miss thing that benefitted both players, Zapdos had one less wall to deal with, but you lost your major defense against his curselax.

This is where the battle gets confusing. Sk switches out snorlax vs marowak despite having one curse up (he was free to sweep at this point). You kept trying to freeze something (i guess with a team like that, you're looking for the CH/freeze pretty often) instead of relaying spikes. This wasn't just a misplay. It was an aberration. The bigger picture, I'm sure you missed, was that spikes was your only path to victory. But even looking at it in the simplest way, "oh starmie's dead, it's a spinner, maybe i should lay spikes or something", to which you responded, "nah, i'm going to try and freeze suicune instead". That shows a pretty bad understanding for the game, especially since Suicune was a non-factor that game for the most part. Regardless though, you then tried exploding Cloyster on Suicune only to miss and hit ttar. This was a whatever play.

So at this point, it was LK curselax, zapdos, suicune, ttar vs zapdos, st marowak, blissey, zam. IF you had spikes, you could'e played a little two man game with Marowak scaring Snorlax, Zapdos scaring Skarm, racking up spikes damage until Zapdos could go in for the kill on Snorlax. But this wasn't an option, because you went for the freeze on Suicune instead.

He had curselax, an LK one at that. What did you have in response to this? Please explain your options at this point. Actually, I'll do it for you. Zapdos had an embarrassing 6HKO on snorlax. Zam wasn't doing anything that battle. ST Marowak had a 12hko on Skarmory. And blissey, who does slightly less than Zam. And you had no spikes to rack up any residual damage because you were too busy freezing Suicune, who Sk could've lost with no repurcussions.

CHes were irrelevent. Curselax could beat you at any given time. You already lost this game. And the commentary? Every bit as embarrassing as the play. People complaining about luck, the irrelevent luck. I hope that bolstered your ego. It only showed how far behind people still are after all these years.

Alakazam (F) @ Leftovers
- Encore
- Fire Punch
- Psychic
- Recover

This is... your best answer to curselax? Encore is great, IF you can catch people. This thing into a curselax? Not the best risk vs reward I'd say, especially when that reward is negated by bringing Snorlax right back.

Cloyster (M) @ Leftovers
- Explosion
- Ice Beam
- Spikes
- Surf

Marowak (M) @ Thick Club
- Earthquake
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Body Slam

I hope you run EQ, RS, SD, Rest in your free time. I do remember you alluding to that, which is a lot better. This set is just horrible for this team and its lack of offense. BS EQ Resttalk Marowak is a support pokemon, not a sweeper. So when "Blissey sets up Marowak like a champ", Marowak should at least be able to do something. BS does a whopping 36% max to Zapdos, just an FYI.

I assume this was DP, or ttar would've switched in (but wait! isn't DP for blissey and not for ttar???????).

No spinner hurts you in the long run. No phazer is a definite risk, but it's a good thing you scout the people who run ML so you'd know ahead of time. Furthermore, there's a strong inconsistency in team "strategy". If you ever do win a battle, I guarantee it's either against a joke of a team, or it's because of Gengar + Cloyster (or Marowak, if you run the SD set), or of course, luck. The rest are just ehhh. Alakazam will have his moments. Zapdos might as well (it's never getting past Snorlax, Raikou, Rhydon, or Steelix though... or another ST Marowak). Blissey can set up Marowak like a champ (assuming you go with SD).

Seismic Toss can "make" Skarm Rest all it wants (or risk the Skarm player taking the OHKO and trying to fenagle a recover opportunity later), a 4HKO that can't crit will never break it./quote]
Funny guy. After 2 stosses, shit like drumlax, drumfable, SD wak, etc are all set free. You don't have to kill Skarmory to make a difference, weakening it is all you need. HOWEVER, to humor/educate you on a few things, 4hko turns into KOs if you know how. Here's a scenario:

Snorlax (curse is worst case scenario, but it doesn't really matter what set this is), Starmie (psychic, as per the standard spinner), Skarmory (doesn't matter what set here), Suicune/Tyranitar (doesn't matter what set here).

When no amount of strategy will get you out with a win, that's when you've lost. You've lost the battle with Sk as soon as Gengar exploded, but Sk gave you a breath of hope by misplaying Starmie, but then you blew it by not relaying spikes with Cloyster. This was the end of the game. It would've taken a miracle for you to take out Snorlax, in which case it would've turned into a long, drawn out PP battle. You would've needed to luck Sk insanely just to pull out a draw.

When has a topic ever... stayed on-topic? Plus, this is pretty on-topic as far as on-topicness is concerned. ctrl + f "snorlax" shows up quite a few times in my post.

Sk played about as bad as anyone could play. Yet he still won, what does that tell you? But at least you're "openly" (in a PM) willing to admit the battle was long lost before luck.

I'm not criticizing your individual play (except for not respiking, that was just idiocy) because let's face it, it was abysmal on both ends. You played better than Sk, I never denied that. But better than "pretty bad" isn't something to be proud of, is it?

Offering free lessons for a "cocky veteran like yourself".

edit: And you can't honestly tell me that after 10 years, you've only got one team. I don't believe that. I'm sitting at 9 years with well over 90 usable teams.

And I wouldn't cite SPL as the ultimate collection of GSC talent or anything (certainly not from what I've seen and what you've shown me), in which you remain king. It's all pretty mediocre in terms of plays (pretty simple prediction-based play with no real strategy to back it, game usually ends with luck/surprise move/explosion or whatever; nothing eventful) and teams (all offenses rely on explosion, defensive teams are pretty much exactly what I outline (which, if you're following my guides, is really a guideline for a second-tier stall, nothing spectacular), etc, as well as a couple oddball teams that seem like they're taken straight from 2002-2003). I can pick out 4-5 random NBers from Brazil/China and they'd all have a positive record if given the chance to participate. Hell, give me a week or two (assuming my interest in GSC can last this long) with pretty much anyone who understands basic Pokemon battling and I'd bring him to SPL-or-above levels in GSC pretty consistently.

Just saying.

edit2: There still untapped parts in GSC, even for me. Remember Kingdra? Remember how much I bashed it? Shits a monster of a tank. I feel like GSC still has quite a ways to go, especially with recent events showing how far behind people still are. It seems I'm left with the task of bringing everybody up to speed, to the level I'm at, and it's pretty daunting given my attention span (which for the past month or two, has been astonishing) for this decade old gen. GSC is really a lot more interesting once you get begin to understand it and it all becomes clear, and once it "clicks", it's pretty easy to distinguish good players from the bad, the good teams from the bad, and why some shit just don't work.

You also come to realize, there's no such thing as "new" teams, which is a truth that everyone doesn't want to believe. I believe a "new" team is only possible with a "new" idea, a new concept, a new strategy, new dynamics to playing the team, how it functions should be different. Simply swapping out curselax for cursegon2 doesn't make a new team. What these are are variations, usually inferior variations of teams (e.g. changing the spiker, changing from DE to BS or vice-versa, Thunder to Thunderbolt, etc; insignificant changes that do not affect the dynamics of a team). Those exist. But if you want the absolute best out of one team, chances are, someone else (usually me) probably made it already. It sucks, but it's true. This is why I'm hesitant when I "fix" people's teams. It usually results in something I've already made.

Ad hominem arguments are not useful for tiering discussions, please take irrelevant talk to another thread or PM as Mr.E attempted to do.

As for the topic at hand, there seem to be three major things to resolve, which would have to be done in this order:

1. Should we alter past gen tier lists?
We could decide to wait for a more popular sim to include early gens before messing with tier lists, or simply fix them. However, havoc's changes a while back ruled out the "never touch them" idea, and opened the door for more drastic moves.

2. Should the Characteristics of an Uber, or some adapted version of them, be used to determine bans in early generations?
Obviously, either the characteristics are going to need a very different interpretation or some changes to fit with such a different metagame. Maybe GSC players have a different way entirely they would like to judge brokenness.

3. Does Snorlax itself fall under whatever criteria are decided for tiering changes?
Only once the first two points are decided (especially the second) is discussion on this really useful, imo.

Tiering arguments. Motion to ban LK lax (or LK drumlax (or AGI pass to LK drumlax)), since I've had this written for a while now. Keep in mind the whole reward:skill ratio I mention earlier (the gist of it: curselax and mixlax are easy to use, thus the reward is much smaller; drumlax is much harder, and the reward, much greater; LK is easy to use, and the reward is pretty damn good as well), as well as the mere concept of a more balanced metagame, and why Snorlax is great, but on a whole not amazing. It needed a game breaking move to really push it over the edge.

I'm making these arguments with a metagame in mind. Whether or not you acknowledge the existence of said metagame is irrelevent to credibility of the argument itself.

LK didn't even exist in the very early years of GSC. NYPC offered it later on, but that was at the peak of NYPC-frowning-upon (I don't think there ever existed a NYPC clause). And let's face it, these newer gen players have no idea what NYPC even signifies, just that, "oh cool, the best pokemon in gsc learns sleep".

It's not about what works "now", what worked in "this battle", it's a overall effect on the entire metagame, and many of you will fail to grasp that. You build teams thinking, "hey this works", when not realizing there's a clear difference between "what works" and "what works better". It's that same clairvoyance that you have to display when considering something like LK Snorlax. Let's face it, Snorlax is the metagame. Give snorlax Thunder Wave and suddenly it affects the entire meta. It's not about, "hey, in this battle his lk lax sucked", but the impact on a whole. Did you play differently because the simple notion that LK exists on Snorlax? You might've switched to zapdos when you otherwise wouldn't, predicting that LK, only to see his Snorlax curse or drum up. LK snorlax make the non-lk snorlax even better because of that. Snorlax doesn't have 8 moves, but you play like it does. And when one of them is drum, and the other is lk, and you're suppose to go in two completely different directions to beat either move, that completely breaks the game. Not to mention the destruction of drum + lk on a single set.

Furthermore, I can see arguments fueled by the simple notion that LK Lax is one of the best stall breakers, and stall breaker = good thing in GSC. That's cool and all, and I totally agree, but not in this sense. If you hadn't already noticed, GSC took a turn for a much quicker meta, there's plenty of stall breaking options. Absolutely NO ONE who's played GSC recently considers GSC a stall gen anymore. The only ones still stuck in "loolol GSC = stall" mindset are the newer and the older players, aka those that don't play GSC, those that speculate. If you feel GSC = stallfest, then you're probably not very good at GSC, and I don't mean that in a bad way -- Smogon articles have been pretty misinforming. By no means am I saying stalls are bad, but that they're merely a shadow of their former selves. Stalls are still great, amazing even, against the poorly built teams. Even when being outplayed, the sheer brute walling power of stalls can pull out wins. However, there have been a whole slew of stall breaking secrets that have been recently (past 4 years or so) revealed. I've invented bait-explosion over half-decade ago and shared it with you guys for a more strategical approach to breaking stalls, since clearly the conventional way of attacking blindly failed. I've also invented Vaporeon at the same time (since the team revolved around bait-explosion anyway), another NYPC pokemon, that's become one of the best pokemon in GSC and probably a top 3 sweeper at this point, fully capable of breaking stalls. Chris also brought to attention the existence of mixed sweepers, for those that feel skarmbliss = unbeatable. And there's also the slower, methodical Heracross/Marowak/Snorlax approach to wear down Skarms. Then there's just straight blindly exploding shit, because let's face it, there's only so much you can do against Explosion, even if you know it's coming. There's also Clefable, Charizard, and even Quagsire, who are all much to quick to be walled. And of course, just straight Drumlax is enough. But with all these pokemon and their upsides, there are huge downsides, frailty, predictability (what else is Charizard going to do?), hard counters, being slow, risky, etc that just end up balancing things out. Snorlax's downside? He's stupidly resilient, unpredictable as hell, uncounterable for the duration of GSC's existence, quick with the drum, and not that risky at all. He's the best pokemon in GSC afterall.

Anyway, there are a couple ways you can go about reliably beating each type of Snorlax (assuming LK-less here):

SD lax - 1 for 1 trade is your best bet. Really.

Curselax - will ALWAYS have rest (I consider any lax with SD to be SD lax). So depending on the second move:

Suicune can take a few hits before going down as well, especially behind Reflect. I'm hesitant to mention Blissey, but technically it can growl snorlax down as well. Meganium falls in the same boat, both with one turn recovery. AA Vaporeon also outpaces it to the kill. Cloyster can screech explode if need be, and it clamps to boot. Alakazam, Jumpluff, and Raichu can all encore as well.

The concept behind sub is that it blocks statuses and growl/charm. The concept behind drum is that it counters growl/charm, as well as outpacing the pgon2s, and hits skarm with a punch if you need it.

The phazers listed are obviously useless if Snorlax is the last poke though (skarm, rhydon, golem, ttar, steelix). That is, unless they curse/rest/both too.

Drumlax - Since we're talking non-LK snorlax here, it'll probably have rest as well, so depending on the second move:

The list is much shorter here, but we're make a list for pretty surefire counters, and of course, there are none really. The best bet is through attacking with whatever you have active, unlike curselax, Belly Drum is a suicidal move to do in front of anything you know is going to attack. Beating belly drum is not about having the right pokemon, but having the right play. If you're aggressive against it, it tends to be less effective. If you're conservative, it's probably the best pokemon in the game. A general rule of thumb to follow is that a drumlax between 45%-72% probably won't drum. Anything under makes you suceptible to an +2 drum, anything over puts it out of KO range for most attackers.

Mixlax - Again, we're assuming Rest here. Any snorlax without SD will probably rest, and those that have SD are part of SD lax. The general strategy here is that any real mixwall shouldn't have too much trouble with Snorlax. Snorlax fails to 3hko suicune (3hko is important because rest is a 3 turn process), and Reflect starmie takes relatively measeley damage as well (don't do this if it thunders or body slams though). Furthermore, you have Umbreon, the all-purpose wall, not to mention, this Snorlax set isn't too threatening to Misdreavus. Pgon2 can switch in over and over again, if Snorlax isn't packing a way to para it. And depending on FB or Thunder, Snorlax fails to 3hko Forretress/Cloyster as well. Miltank walls snorlax just fine, just gotta take the para slam if it does come and bell up. Snorlax fails to 3hko Zapdos w/o DE, and even with Return is still a slight reach. Machamp isn't too afraid of this Snorlax either, especially if it rests, or comes in behind a Reflect. Add Marowak to that list as well.

Now, with all these "counters", Snorlax is still, by and large, the best Pokemon in GSC OU. By. Far. Better than Celebi/Ho-oh as well, but that's another story. And the cool thing is, a lot of these counters are not only OU, but overlap on countering the different snorlax sets. And for the one set that's "uncounterable" (drumlax), you can easily play around it by being aggresssive and with prediction, which you should be doing anyway. Snorlax gets balanced and countered just through regular GSC play.

With LK, the key to understanding why it's broken is the unpredictability. Honestly, it wouldn't be terrible if everyone just named LK Snorlax "LK Snorlax" to let the opponent know, but it's the fact that Snorlax comes in with 4 completely unknown moves, and you have to account for all of them when playing. So sometimes you're being threatened by something that doesn't even exist, and in this sense, you're essentially playing a snorlax with 5-6, or even 7 moves, which is what makes it too good. Unpredictability. Why is Gengar "better", even as a ptrapper, than Misdreavus? Unpredictability. No one expects it. The same argument for Encore Zam/Raichu/Jumpluff? Why is it so good? It's the simple idea that the opponent "might" use the move, not necessarily the actual usage of the move itself. Switching zam into a snorlax in the middle of cursing makes that snorlax switch out, even without the actual use of the move encore. Having it in its moveset, hell, in more advanced battles, you learn that just having a move in its movePOOL is enough to deter some plays. In shorter battles, you can get away with a tbolt/thunderless zapdos for a reason, when your opponent realizes you don't have it, it could be too late. Anyway, onto the "review" itself:

SD lax - 2 for 1 in most cases, sometimes more. Consider yourself lucky if you get 1 for 1. SD LK lax is just a better Exeggutor/Gengar if you look at it in a knowing sense, but you don't know that. You'd never switch out against a low HP Snorlax expecting it to explode, as you would with Gengar/Egg. Unpredictability.

Curselax - Not too bad. Curselax will still have rest in this case, but with LK, his pool gets limited. I wouldn't say it's too much better than the other three versions of Curselax. The main difference here, however, is the fact that LK even lends more unpredictability. Not only did you have to worry about EQ, FB, Drum, ST, Sub, but now you worry about a potential LK. And out of all those moves, only Drum is as gamebreaking as LK. Everything else can be recovered from. The difference with Drum, of course, is that Ghosts don't necessarily stop you cold, not to mention the original counters in Ttar/Rhydon, don't really work. But all in all, it's the added unpredictability of the move that makes it broken.

Drumlax - There are two versions to consider, one without Rest, and one with.

With rest: You lose a lot of coverage here, however, unless you have a ghost + rock, or ghost + steel, or steel + rock, you're still shit out of luck. And it's not a horrible idea to pass agility to this thing either. However, if this snorlax is required to take hits, then it's not that effective, and general drumlax counter strategies apply here. However, you're still at a severe disadvantage having to account for the possibility of EQ, FB, etc, and you can't immediately send out your ghost/steel/rock if this is the case. Again, LK is dangerous because of the added level of unpredictability.

Without rest: This set wouldn't exist without LK, and generally coincides with a BP'd Agility to instantly win the game. Quite frankly, unless you know ahead of time what the team is, there's nothing you can do apart from running stupidly counter-ish. And even if you do know, there's really so much you can do. The list of stuff snorlax doesn't KO is small, and if it doesn't win the game (e.g. you predict LK, sacrifice something, then send in Skarm for the phaze, even though Skarm still has a chance of being OHKOed by DE), you've lost a good portion of your team. The worst part above all, is that there's really no way to play around it. Skill isn't a factor here, and when that happens there's a blatant brokenness to something and it doesn't belong in a meta. Mewtwo/Mew (Lugia isn't an offensive threat, but it doesn't take skill to use either) both don't need skill to be used effectively, brute force and rediculous staying power is sometimes better than crafty plays or... skill.

Mixlax - Assuming it Rests, it loses a lot of coverage. It's still an upgrade on the mixlax of old, just because it can sleep the all purpose wall. It's not too gamebreaking, more of a roleplayer, and it's no surprise this is the least popular of the bunch.

So really, it's not the sheer move itself, since it really only gives birth to one new dimensional of play: bp to lk drumlax. This one dimension, however, is easily the most destructive sweeper in GSC history, bettering ubers easily. But in a general sense, the main argument here is the unnecessarily bettering of the already best pokemon in GSC. Now it's not bad if you give Snorlax something like Light Screen, but LK is simply gamebreaking. Now with Gengar's unpredictability, the only Pokemon that really comes close to Snorlax with LK, comes fragility. Along with being frail, there's also an unstoppable way of countering it: Pursuit. That's not the case with Snorlax, there are no unboosted special moves that are a guaranteed a 4HKO, let alone a 3HKO. Furthermore, there are only a handful of physical moves that 3HKO the thing, then you account for LK and Curse and it just gets nasty. Having something... unstoppable that's so stupidly easy to use can't be healthy for a metagame. It doesn't take any finesse as with Charizard, or Clefable, or even Quagsire, and leaves very little room for what the rest of GSC signifies.

Anyway, some of the highest skilled, most knowledgeable players have agreed that LK lax is too powerful for OU play, and that there's just no realistic way around it and it simply doesn't belong there. If not an LK lax ban on a whole, the at the very least, LK drumlax. I guess it's somewhat possible to recover from the slower sets.

PS: If none of this goes through, feel free to use it in some Snorlax analysis article/review or something. Smogon's current one sucks.

For the record, of the courses of action suggested in Borat's article above, I would most support banning LK-lax, even if LK-Drumlax is the only version that's the real problem. Why? Well, I believe that any ban should be as simple as possible while still covering the need. "You cannot have Snorlax use Lovely Kiss" is a far simpler ban than "You can have Snorlax use Lovely Kiss, and you can have Snorlax use Belly Drum, but you cannot have it use both Lovely Kiss and Belly Drum."

Of course, the whole thing becomes more-or-less moot if Snorlax is moved to Uber anyway, but based on what I've seen on this topic, it looks like that wouldn't happen.

Well, as far as I understand, the ban on Missy works in such a "convoluted" way (you can have ML + PT missy, or you can have Hypnosis Missy, but you can't have hypnosis + PT Missy). So going convoluted with moveset bans isn't exactly unprecedented. However, the point with Snorlax and LK isn't to specifically ban what, given infinite knowledge throughout the match, causes the most problems. It's the unpredictability of Snorlax that LK gives it, which means that ANY set can give you the most problems, because you just can't see it coming with any certainty. The LK mixlax, while in and of itself non-threatening, could come out of nowhere with LK and severely compromise your plans. Couple this with the other moves that Snorlax can use, and you have a pokemon that's completely unpredictable and practically invincible in his tanking abilities. There's no way to counter enough Snorlax variants where LK is allowed, unless you use some weird hyper-specialized crap.

True, that particular ban does work that way, and it would work here too, but like I said, I'd rather keep it simple. Besides, if we specifically ban LK-Drumlax, then it turns out other LK variants are still a problem, we end up having to change the ban to the simpler one anyway.

LK is as good as a kill if it's unexpected. And in the case with Agi-passed Drumlax, an LK is a "kill" regardless of whether or not it's expected (which it usually is). And unlike Gengar/Egg, you just don't have the time and resources to scout all 4 moves, hence there's really nothing you can do without having scouted beforehand.

Move bans aren't a new thing, are we forgetting HP legends? Anyway, this LK ban more or less falls in the same boat with Hypnomissy, the sleep move, the NYPCness, etc.

I think Borat's post (40) is actually very convincing. The more I play GSC, the more I see it completely revolves around Snorlax. I'd like to see Snorlax banned, or put Ho-oh/Celebi back into the game...